Although its overabundance of retirees gives Tampa Bay the lowest ratio of singles on our list, young people have also started chasing the sun. And Tampa is getting better at catering to them. Now that the once cool Ybor City is littered with fake-ID-carrying minors, South Tampa has become the new hot spot. Sophisticated bars serving sugar-rimmed martini drinks stand cheek-by-jowl with punk music venues. If you'd rather be at the mall than at the bar, International Plaza is a shopper's dream, featuring designer names and five-star dining. Hyde Park, meanwhile, showcases contemporary stores in an old fashioned setting, including colonial architecture and brick roads that lead up to a pottery barn. Football has made Tampa sports crazy. And now that the Tampa Bay Lightning took this year's Stanley Cup, the perennial playoff-contending Buccaneers aren't the only game in town. —Marianne Hayes

Methodology: Our overall ranking is based on the sum of the rankings within seven separate categories for the 40 biggest U.S. metros. The data used to create these rankings came from Forbes, the U.S. Census, ACCRA, Woods & Poole, AOL City Guides/Digital City, Richard Florida and Kevin Stolarick, Catalytix and Carnegie Mellon University.The first six categories are given equal weight, while the buzz factor is given less weight.

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